Project Moohan shows that Samsung doesn’t understand what makes the Meta Quest 3 special – and I don’t think AI will save it
Samsung and Google have finally announced Project Moohan, their long-awaited collaboration on XR headsets, and I’m cautiously optimistic that Meta will finally have a real challenger to its XR throne in store, if only because I’m a little tired of recommending anything. The latest Quest VR headset is the best option for people to buy – they’re great, but some variety would be nice.
However, I fear that the two companies may already be making the same blunders as Apple with its Apple Vision Pro. I’m not talking about price – at least not yet, because we don’t know how much Moohan will cost (a word of advice, Samsung: it should have cost less than $1,000) – but rather I’m looking at a factor that’s just as important: software .
I test a lot of VR headsets, and my biggest problem with any non-Meta device is the software. When it comes to standalone headset experiences, Quest’s offering is second to none thanks to its vast library, which offers variety and is well stocked with exclusive products you can’t get anywhere else.
Project Moohan will reportedly feature a huge range of native Android apps at launch, but like the Apple Vision Pro, these will be ports of existing phone and tablet apps. Yes, interacting with them in VR would bring novelty; however, the Vision Pro has proven that novelty alone is not enough to change units and make a device feel like a valuable alternative to our phones, tablets and laptops.
What we really need are bona fide Moohan exclusives; I’m talking about Google and Samsung’s rivals, among others Batman: Arkham Shadow. By releasing Moohan’s developer kit now, the companies are at least giving app makers a head start so they can hopefully have some great exclusives ready for launch day, which the companies currently predict will be sometime in 2025.
That said, Apple also gave developers an early development kit, and that turned out not to be enough. A lack of time was certainly a factor – software development doesn’t happen overnight, and less than twelve months’ notice has clearly proven insufficient in the case of the Vision Pro.
Financial risk also plays a role. Developing an app isn’t cheap, and developing it for an unproven system carries more risks than normal. You can’t accurately estimate what your expected revenues will be if you have no idea how many people will own the system. As we’ve seen, the way Meta has managed to avoid this chicken-and-egg situation is by having its Reality Labs division throw money at VR and MR software studios in exchange for exclusive access to their creations on Quest .
Yes, there’s a certain fiscal recklessness to Meta’s Reality Labs gamble — that division of the company is draining money on a scale that even the most dodgy “disruptive” Silicon Valley startups could only dream of — but it’s paying off .
Given what the Quest 3, Quest 3S and Ray-Ban Meta smart glasses are capable of, it’s impossible to look at a rival in their respective categories – XR or AI wearables – and recommend anything else. So Google and Samsung may want to throw their collective wallets around if they want to achieve the results that Meta has.
You can’t just say ‘AI’ and call it a day
Google and Samsung’s gamble instead appears to be the promise of AI functionality facilitated by Gemini. But simply announcing that “Gemini will see what you see and hear what you hear” and refusing to elaborate doesn’t give developers (or us) much to go on.
Meta AI exists on Quest and it’s not exciting, so forgive me if I think the prospect of Gemini on Moohan sounds as exciting as watching paint dry.
If Gemini offered some of the tangible potential use cases that Google and Samsung were talking about — an example I often point to is a chatbot that can generate virtual objects you can interact with based on your prompts — I might be less skeptical. But simply saying Moohan has AI and calling it a day isn’t enough.
However, when we talk about the AR glasses that Samsung and Google have promised us, that’s a completely different story. A personal assistant who can share your experiences to help inform responses – for example, to provide real-time advice such as what groceries to pick up for a meal or how to get to a destination on time based on crowds and delays, or to to provide timely fly details about a landmark you pass – that’s actually useful. But a headset for home use with the same capabilities is not that useful.
That is why the question is whether Samsung and Google – like Apple – want to make a headset at all. I don’t believe headsets are coming – just as phones and laptops coexist, I believe AR glasses and XR headsets will coexist – but it seems like Google and Samsung’s expertise would lend itself to the more AR glasses for on the go.
This lines up with what the two companies have told us about their headset and glasses so far, and it’s the AR glasses that I’m most excited about trying, with Moohan, despite being launched first, a felt less interesting as an afterthought.
With so many unknowns surrounding Moohan, I’ll reserve judgment for now – but Google and Samsung will have to tread carefully, otherwise their Vision Pro competitor could turn out to be a Vision Pro clone in the wrong way.